SURF REPORT The Inner Kook

SURF REPORT

The Inner Kook




21 August 2009

CDIP showed a 2.1 at 20 from the 195 so I chased it with Otter. Looked at unrideable Nucklehead. Chugged down to the cove at California Street, sat on the wall watching three guys not really ride, but if the tide was lower it would have been better. Went home dry.

22 August 2009

Jonesing for the GodAlmighty swell. No surf for a week. Now its arrived. Gotta pick for the farmers market. Up early and run through the common chore tedium. Load the drawers with cash. ThisThatThisThat. Load the truck with boxes. Gotta dump and clean the compost buckets, haul the perishables to the shade. Water the nursery. Pick cucumbers. Prince and Otter already heading down to the point. They plan to get it with the tide low and coming up, i.e., perfectly timed. Eventually I plan to head down with Phaneuf. Now it’s 2.7 feet from 185 degrees south with 17 second intervals.

Phaneuf’s Monika, Katy-O and Olivia have been eating biscotti and drinking espresso, picking basil in full chuckle. They independently decided to wear their colored woolen caps. Calvinism and Hedonism tear my psyche but I go anyway, figuring I can catch up in the early PM once my Jones is doused. Down Santa Ana to the 33, Phaneuf is receiving and relaying reports on his two-way wrist radio. I stare at the DIP like a little digital talisman as if expecting mysteries to be revealed.

The Nuckle is walled. John’s friend Dave is just getting out of the water. Dave eats at the Farmer and the Cook every lunch apparently, but I do not recognize him wet in neoprene without a sandwich in his hand. Dave says it was “pretty good an hour ago.” Drawing scant comfort, we impetuously haul to Ventura Point. Otter and Prince are buttoning up their shirts, and Pisser says it was “ pretty good an hour ago.” The tide is beginning to swamp The Point.

“ Looks like we better get out there if we’re going to before this gets funky.”

I agree, but its already getting funky. On a 5.5 foot tide, small waves that might have been ridden slosh onto the rocks. Larger waves stand and wobble toward shore uncertainly like your drunk grandpa. The larger sets today have three waves per, so forty people chase three waves breaking on two or three peaks, resulting in heightened competitive anxiety. I don’t recognize many people. A young guy is doing well inside on a long board so I figure to get some modest waves under my belt before I paddle out to park with the other buoys. Everybody is sitting. Inside its pretty Maytag, with the churning backwash slopping up the incoming wave. There’s a lot of depressing bouncing around. I snag a couple of sudden chest high lefts that are somewhat rewarding. I should have stayed there.

We wander to (the) Pipe “ The only show in town.” Says Phaneuf. I find myself in miraculous position on a fair comber and as I push off, the board cleaves through some kelp ( its that close to shore) entangling my right hand. The ensuing struggle and ignominious flop alter lineup chemistry perceptibly.

After a few sets, I am back at the gate, paddling for a nice waist high slosher. A woman to my right has been surfing out there for awhile. She begins to paddle as well, in rather close proximity, and as the rapturous moment arrives in which to launch, she turns to me and announces:

“ I’ve got it.”

I had remained so shamed by going full Doofus on my previous attempt that I could say nothing back but: “Go then.”

I had full position and had been paddling earlier, so my case for primacy was fairly air-tight, except for the Doofus Factor. I plainly did not deserve the wave, especially if so few of them were coming our way. Waste not want not, eh, cherie?

So I pulled up, dragging the tail of the board down into the wave in an abject demonstration of undignified defeat. The wave surged around my knees. What should I have done, dropped in on her tail block?

I had been snaked by a lady who had announced the snaking like some mild rattler on the side of the path, as if to say “ Here I am!”

And of course I had let her on. Rattlers own the path. She was a stylish, fit gal, perhaps forty-five years old, who had surfed well with nice equipment, including one of those Patagonia water caps I thought I wanted-until being sullied by a woman wearing one. From afar I later envied the wave she laid on her jazzy arch-stance for.

Stung with condemnation I meandered back into the anonymous lineup, then suddenly brightened with an absurd thought. I should just write about my defeat in order to rescue the entire event from contemptible mediocrity. The opportunity for self-ridicule usually yields a whiff of comedy. Nontheless, I could not erase that large yellow D that had been stenciled on my back. It was as if I could read the thoughts of some in the thinning crowd: Doofus! Kook! Geezer! But no doubt they paid me little mind or merely pitied me.

We retreated to the middle break, fully Maytagging now at peak tide. I prayed for any feeble roller to appear and send me to shore. My last wave made up for nothing, but I rode it without injuring myself or others, nor was further humiliated.

The score, based on a three wave minimum, left me feeling short two. I had ridden six waves in one hour, flopped one, gotten pounded from behind on a late take-off, ridden two zippy lefts and one fair right, and lost innumerable waves on the snaking. It was like hitting into the water hazard on the final hole in golf.


24 August 2009

In the evening of the Great Snaking, the swell registered 3.5 from the 180. Sunday morning, I ferried produce to the farmers market, built the stall with O and Katy and left with John at 10. Phaneuf determined from various detailed reports that Hollywood was out, Hueneme was out, the wind forecast was miraculously not showing up, and that there was a big contest at Shores. So it was to be Nuckles on a burgeoning tide, which was suitable. After my last rising tide go-out at Ventura Point I was not ready to subject myself to another crowded moment in the washtub.

Ojai State Beach was a paradise of glassy surf as we hove to, next to Brian Hugheart, an old friend of John’s. Brian and I are the same age more or less. Brian had given John his first board and dated his sister. Brian has an 8 foot fish that seems like a nice template to try. Wide and dense with foam. The waves are about as good as it gets. We are specifically more towards Trader Joes than Nuckleheads. Its all going off between two and four feet, head high or bigger on the set waves. Phaneuf suggests that riding these semi-closeouts will sharpen our “ chops” when the winter arrives. Lots of people lots of peaks. I get a enough waves to redeem my bent soul from yesterday and then put some in the bank . The lefhanded drops yield excitement.. If the place needs a name later I can always call that medium bar Redemptions. There is a big dip in the asphalt down there I nearly rolled into once.